More than 17,000 buildings are at risk in England while Heritage Lottery Fund awards fell 15% in real terms over the past two years and English Heritage has seen its spending fall by £19.6million in real terms in the past five years.

That was the message from Britain\'s leading heritage organisations (Heritage Link, English Heritage, National Trust, Historic Houses Association and the Heritage Lottery Fund) presented in a report to the Government in January. The organisations said their report, Valuing our Heritage - The case for future investment in the historic environment, presented Government with a major opportunity to halt the decline of thousands of historic buildings, to ensure a simpler and faster heritage protection system is implemented successfully, and to get more people involved with the historic environment.

They said there was a backlog of more than £1billion in outstanding repairs at listed places of worship and charitably and privately owned heritage buildings. At the same time, the report shows that spending per head on heritage in England is less than in many other European countries.